School options can feel like an infomercial. Have you ever watched a 30-minute pitch for a shiny new juicer on TV? You’re captivated by the wholesomeness, the nutritional value, the way this machine is going to makeover your life for the better and cure disease and make you look like a supermodel.

We don’t realize that the juicer will get clogged every other use and that it’ll take fifteen minutes to clean the parts and that we’ll use $10 worth of organic produce per juice. We fail to see these pricey, life-changing machines might begin to gather dust and finally end up in a yard sale.

Why? Because we only see part of the story. We become inspired and then we become convinced and then that conviction turns into a mandate. We must get the juicer. 

Options that start out as inspiring and encouraging can sometimes turn bossy and demanding. Indoctrination has a way of inciting our emotions while simultaneously shutting down our brains. I don’t mean to be harsh. I write from experience. Also? I own a juicer.

Books, conferences, blogs, experts — they wouldn’t have any persuasive power if they didn’t have an underlying agenda. Agendas aren’t a bad thing. If we’re trying to influence others, we have to operate from a place of passion and presupposition. But sometimes we’re so persuaded by the virtues of a certain way of doing school and how well it’s working for others that we fail to see the pitfalls and real-life variables.

We forget that there’s no perfect way.

I once sat in a homeschooling workshop and listened to a speaker issue some very unsettling generalizations about what kids learn {and don’t learn} in public-school literature classes. She spoke with authority and a veneer of expertise. But I almost walked out of the session because I had first-hand knowledge that her generalizations were untrue.

But what if I hadn’t known any better? What if I’d been a newbie parent? I might have made a hasty decision fueled by fear and misinformation.

It’s good to do research. It’s a lovely thing to become inspired. It’s freeing to make a choice and feel confident in it.

But it’s not fine to be driven by fear, exclusivity, self-righteousness, or a city-on-a-hill mentality. It’s not okay to persuade others using these lesser motivations into one option over another option. I’m not singling out one camp. Persuasive arguments and overstatements abound from every camp and all the subsets within each camp — from the virtues of homeschooling to the must-ness of public schooling to the private schools that guarantee to graduate smarter, safer kids.

Desperation makes us vulnerable. And when our most precious commodity is at stake — our children — it’s easy to get swept into a way of doing school that makes it a savior instead of an option.

Ask me how I know.

I wish I’d tucked away the books and the experts and simply prayed more. I wish I’d used the God-given common sense that my husband and I both possess instead of getting caught up in idealism and educational utopias. Though I don’t regret our choices and I have seen how God is using all the ways we’ve done school, I simply wish I’d proceeded differently, trusting that Jesus would gently lead us and that He didn’t need the help of educational evangelists.

He gently leads those that have young.

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When is a time that inspiration shifted into indoctrination for you? {Also — have you ever bought something off an infomercial?}

For all the posts in this 31-day series, go here. And to read the other posts I’ve written on topic of schooling, you can go here and find them all in one place.

I’m linking up with The Nester and her tribe of 31 Dayers.

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